Dissident Voice

August
7, 2003

Al
From, the founder and soul of the soulless Democratic Leadership Council(DLC),
assembled his flock in Philadelphia recently and warned his comrades about a
takeover of the Democratic Party by "the far left." Launched in 1985,
the "far right" DLC grew to have a controlling interest in the Party
through the efforts of then-Governor Bill Clinton, Senator John Breaux, Senator
Al Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman.

If
there were a superlative to the word "hubris," it would come close to
describing Al From and his DLC cohorts. With unseemly regularity, they take
credit for all Democratic victories as having been rooted in their philosophy
of turn-your-back-on-organized labor and open-your-pockets-to-corporations (who
fund the DLC, incidentally). All Democratic defeats are explained as owing to
losing candidates being too "left" or too "populist."

The
DLC brags about one of their own-- Bill Clinton-- developing the message that
brought the Democrats the White House in 1992, after the disastrous failed and
supposedly ultra-liberal candidacies of Walter Mondale in 1984 and Michael
Dukakis in 1988. Clinton insiders will tell you that Ross Perot (and his 19
million voters) was more responsible for beating President George H. W. Bush
than the DLC strategy.

So
what is the explanation when two of their very own, Gore and Lieberman, lost
what should have been a landslide election in 2000? Soon after the election was
stolen by the Bushites and the Supreme Court, From's group gathered to
post-mortem the reasons why Gore lost (though he won) and concluded it was
because he chanted populism ("I will represent the people, not the
powerful"). A few months later, Lieberman agreed with From, saying he
would not have campaigned with words that criticized industries like the oil,
insurance, drug and HMO barons. (To his credit, From has not blamed the
Greens.)

But
Gore won the election-- both the popular and, as subsequent reviews documented,
the electoral vote in Florida as well. (See Jeffrey Toobin's book "Too
Close to Call.") Instead of going after the still-operating perpetrators
of this theft in Florida and pushing for national electoral reform that not
only accurately counts all the votes but eliminates the disenfranchisement of
citizens from the voting rolls, the DLC continues its ideological tautologies.

Observers
are still waiting for the DLC to explain how, with Democratic candidates
espousing its protective imitation of Republicanism, the Party could lose more
governorships, more state legislatures and both the U.S. House and Senate.
Overall, it has been downhill since the DLC drove the Party into groveling
haplessness beneath corporate lobbies and their corrupting campaign
contributions.

As
the New Republic, a fan of the DLC, reported, the Party deliberately chose conservative
Democratic challengers to win back the House in 1998 and 2000 only to have them
go down in defeat. DLC-type Democratic Senate incumbents went down to defeat in
2002, plaintively expressing their support for George W. Bush's war mongering
and pro-super wealthy tax policies.

To
the DLC mind, Democrats are catering to "special interests" when they
stand up for trade unions, regulatory consumer-investor protections, a
pre-emptive peace policy overseas, pruning the bloated military budget now
devouring fully half of the federal government's entire discretionary
expenditures, defending Social Security from Wall Street schemes, and pressing
for universal health care coverage.

So
right-wing is the DLC, mounted imperiously on their sagging Party, that even
opposing Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, that cause huge federal deficits and
program cuts in necessities such as health, education, environmental protection
and children well-being, is considered ultra-liberal and contrary to winning
campaigns.

"Special
interests" to the DLC means defending the rights of African-Americans,
Hispanics, blue-collar workers, and securing the full day in court for
wrongfully injured Americans. Being serious about consumer justice and
environmental protection also raises DLC's eyebrows.

It
is hard to discern how much is left for the Democratic Party's raison d'etre
when these activities are excluded.

In
1995, Al From emerged from a closed-door meeting with Silicon Valley executives
and announced his support for their restrictive legislation, which passed and
made it harder for defrauded investors to hold the responsible outfits
accountable. Al From was on another mission that day- raising money from these
same computer industry moguls.

Small
wonder that the DLC is not exactly hard on the ensuing corporate crime wave
that has looted or drained trillions of dollars from millions of investors and
pensions.

So
far right is the corporatist DLC that it believes that the Party can move
toward Republican positions and still maintain its voting base among labor and
minorities because they have nowhere else to go. Maybe that is one reason so
many of these voters are staying home.

Liberal
Republican Senators in the Seventies, such as Jacob Javits (New York) and Chuck
Percy (Illinois), would now be considered on the left wing of the DLC-dominated
Democratic Party.

Besides,
what does the Democratic Party win if it loses its historic principles as the
Party of working people and the downtrodden? Nothing more than the right to
take marching orders from its corporate paymasters.

Ralph Naderis Americaís
leading consumer advocate. He is the founder of numerous public interest groups
includingPublic Citizen, and has twice
run for President as aGreen Partycandidate. His
latest book is Crashing the Party: How to Tell the Truth and Still Run for
President (St. Martinís Press, 2002)